{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "bskyPostRef": {
    "cid": "bafyreicdqaxdrmzu7rjdxpk4zfhiqnbgsq2lonsltgijed4znj7veni4zi",
    "uri": "at://did:plc:qefo6jhzy4lvocnzakfk7rbi/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhgrf6pku5t2"
  },
  "path": "/article/207380/one-may-feel-clarity",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-19T16:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://newrepublic.com",
  "tags": [
    "Magazine",
    "Poetry",
    "April 2026"
  ],
  "textContent": "All my assigned readings\n\nare about epiphanies.\n\nI send myself and my writing students\n\non walks, telling them to track one color,\n\nthen “write the poem that follows.”\n\nI collect green: a gardening hose,\n\nRutland Road, an Astroturf lawn\n\nin Ditmas Park. I return\n\nto this lawn at night\n\nto greet the lawn ornaments;\n\na plastic reindeer in its harness\n\na plastic dog with an open mouth.\n\nTwo students submit poems\n\nwith puzzling choices:\n\nall rhyming quatrains\n\nabout the “city’s heart,”\n\nthe “city’s pulse,” the “city’s\n\nrelentless beat.” Who rhymes?\n\nI work backwards,\n\nasking a chatbot\n\nfor creative labor: _Please_\n\n _write me a poem about color?_\n\nThere is pleasure in pure clarity,\n\nI think, as the bot gifts me\n\nthe same rhymed quatrains\n\non “the city’s pulse”\n\n—pleasure in the seasick dread\n\nof ants streaming\n\ninto shape. Green shit\n\nof ducks. Green fake marble inlay.\n\nThe moment, after the end of it,\n\nI understood he had been ending it\n\nwith me for a long time. I held on to that clarity\n\nfor weeks; the calm feeling\n\nof having worked something out.",
  "title": "One May Feel A Clarity"
}